A FIRE AT A SOYBEAN PROCESSING PLANT IN BREWSTER, MINNESOTA, Saturday night led to a decision to declare a mandatory evacuation of the entire town as a precaution.The fire at the Minnesota Soybean Processors plant was triggered by an initial explosion around 10 pm that rattled the entire town. There were employees in the plant at the time and one of them made the initial 9-1-1 call. All of the workers have been accounted for and there were no reported injuries.When the first units arrived on the scene there were three bio-diesel tanks on fire. The incident eventually brought in about 13 fire departments to fight the blaze.The evacuation order was lifted early Sunday morning. The plant processes soybeans into bio-diesel fuel. Damage to the plant is “extensive” and the state fire marshal investigator is on the scene along with the Nobles County sheriff investigators. They are anticipating being able to pinpoint a cause by Tuesday.

The fire was limited to an area involved exclusively with the storage of and loading out of finished soybean oil and soy biodiesel. No explosion occurred and no injuries resulted from the fire.[...]The area of MnSP involved with the fire was well away from production facilities and well away from the grain elevator portion of the facility. Damage was limited to soybean oil and biodiesel load out equipment, to the insulation on a biodiesel storage tank and to a soybean oil storage tank.

Since the event occurred during a holiday weekend evening, only six employees were on site, no load out activity was occurring in the load out area and no employees were in the area of the fire.

Production is expected to resume at MnSP later this week and no layoffs of personnel are expected.

Looking at the photo of the railcars in front of the burned area, it must have been a pretty gnarly fire, but relatively speaking, very limited in extent.

Again, while some may disagree, I take these as reminders that BD & Veggie oil processing has inherit dangers that should not be overlooked. And, while it may take more effort to ignite veggie oil than igniting gasoline, once it starts burning, it can put out quite the flames.

I found another report Here which says in part;"A huge fire broke out late Saturday night at the Minnesota Soybean Processors Plant. It's located in Brewster, which is about 15 minutes northeast of Worthington.The fire was so big that the Nobles County sheriff's officials went to each and every house asking people to leave, including one mother KSFY Action News caught up with."When we woke up this morning it was really really a good feeling to know that everything was safe and we could go back home again," said Bibi Spartz of Brewster.She and her daughter Breanna were rattled by the explosion. Breanna was babysitting at the time and could hear the explosions and see the fire from a mile away."

If there were a fire at an oil refinery which could be compared to this one then we would have some science to work with. Unfortunately from what I read on these posts, only biodiesel plants have fires so a comparison isn't possible.